Surprise! 40 Celebrities That Went To School Together

Have you ever thought to yourself, “It seems like Snoop Dogg and Cameron Diaz have a lot of common history and shared life experiences?” No? Well, then you might be surprised to learn that they both went to the same high school, Long Beach Polytechnic High School in California.

As it happens, celebrities going to the same high school is far more common that you’d think—there are quite a few celebs that shared a grimy gym and lunches of mystery meat, back before they were famous. What’s more, we’re not just talking about high schools in Los Angeles! These high school mates hail from New Jersey, Boston, Georgia, and more.

Chalk it up to talent begetting talent, or maybe there’s just something in the water. However you slice it, you should think twice next time you’re wondering who’s going to make it big from your school—there’s room for more than one star in your graduating class!

Click through the gallery to see 40 stars that—surprise!—went to high school together.

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Nicole Kidman went to school with ...

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... Naomi Watts! The two Aussie actresses were schoolmates at North Sydney Girls' High School. They became friends as teenagers, and have remained close for decades, though now there are rumors that these two famous friends are fighting because Nicole refused to appear in Naomi's "60 Minutes" special. Meow.

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Cameron Diaz was just one year behind ...

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... the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg (It's Snoop Lion now, guys.) Unsurprisingly, when Diaz reminisced about the rapper on "Lopez Tonight," she recalled that, "He was a year older than me ... I remember him, he was very tall and skinny. He wore lots of ponytails. I'm pretty sure I bought weed from him." When Snoop came on the show a few months later, he joked that he, "might have sold her some of that white-girl weed."

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Back when Neil Patrick Harris was playing Doogie Howser, M.D., he was at high school with one other future star ...

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... 90's heartthrob Freddie Prinze Jr. walked the same halls as NPH! He was three years behind the "How I Met Your Mother" star at La Cueva High School in New Mexico.

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Back before she made "the Rachel" famous on "Friends," Jennifer Aniston was at school with ...

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... Chaz Bono! Before Chaz transitioned and began living as a man, he was Cher's daughter Chastity. Chastity and Aniston were pals at the High School of the Performing Arts in NYC. There's even a picture of them, back when they both looked totally different.

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Zach Braff's love letter to New Jersey, the 2004 film "Garden State," may have been modeled on his own high school days with ...

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... Grammy-winning solo artist and Fugees songstress, Lauryn Hill. The two talents were in school together at Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ. In a 2006 interview, Braff casually dropped that even went to his bar mitzvah! "There was a game called Coke and Pepsi," he said. "You'd have a partner, and one person was Coke and the other Pepsi. Depending on what the DJ would yell, you had to run and get on that person's lap. And Lauryn was my Coke and Pepsi partner."

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In her pre-meat dress days, Lady Gaga, née Stefani Germanotta, attended Catholic school with none other than ...

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... hotel heiress Nicky Hilton. The girls were classmates at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City. Paris was a few years ahead, and Gaga recalls that the Hilton sisters were, "Very pretty and very clean. Very, very clean ... It's impressive to be that perfect all the time, these girls."

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Harvard grad BJ Novak shared Ivy League success, "The Office and a high school with this fellow talent ...

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... Brown alum John Krasinski! Krasinski and Novak attended Newton South High School outside of Boston together, long before the two funnymen found success on "The Office." They were even on the same Little League team! In a 2005 interview for The Boston Globe, Krasinski joked that "there's a large oak tree in the Newton Centre park playground that is legendary because only a few humans have hit it with a baseball from home plate. And B.J. Novak is among them." Meanwhile, Novak remembers that,"[Krasinski] was popular and smart, and if he liked a girl he would just ask her out. I was at home, meanwhile, writing to my local TV affiliates, telling them they should air more sitcoms."

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Amazingly, this is not the only secondary education overlap among the cast of "The Office." Ed Helms, also one of the stars of the "Hangover" movies, was classmates with ...

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... Brian Baumgartner, whom you probably know as Kevin. The two actors went to The Westminster School in Georgia, and, in a Reddit AMA, Helms notes that Baumgartner is "NOTHING like Kevin, and is a smart, hilarious, down-to-earth fella. And a freakishly good golfer."

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Before her break-out role as Angela Chase in "My So-Called Life," Claire Danes was classmates with future co-star ...

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... Morena Baccarin. The stars (and on-set romantic rivals on the hit Showtime series "Homeland") were middle school classmates together at the NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies.

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This one is a doozy. What do British songbirds Jessie J ...

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... Leona Lewis ...

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... and Adele have in common? They all started out as students at the BRIT School in London! Not surprisingly, it's a performing arts school.

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Alright, chances are good that you can guess which fellow celeb went to high school with Matt Damon ...

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... It's Ben Affleck, of course! These two movie stars were in plays together at Cambridge Rindge and Latin in Massachusetts before ultimately joining forces to create "Good Will Hunting," and becoming bonafide superstars in the process.

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The late rapper Notorious B.I.G. was at school with another major name in hip-hop ...

... Jay Z! Jay Z and Biggie both got their start at Brooklyn's George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School. This was clearly a talented student body; Busta Rhymes went there too.

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This is another gimme. Since way back in high school, "Girls" creator Lena Dunham has been tight with ...

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... actress and artist Jemima Kirke. The two were at St. Ann's School in New York City together, and Dunham cast Kirke in her first feature-length project, "Tiny Furniture," in 2010. Kirke actually only originally took part in "Girls" as a favor to her long-time friend; Kirke is married with two children and identifies professionally as an artist first. Perhaps more surprising is their other classmate from St. Ann's ...

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... Paz de la Huerta. The actress and model was, until recently, a regular on "Boardwalk Empire." She has since been fired, most likely due to her wild personal life, which includes a variety of drunken antics and claims that she received an orgasm from Elvis' ghost. We're guessing she was the party girl back in high school.

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Speaking of Lena Dunham, her boyfriend Jack Antonoff, the lead guitarist of the band Fun., was close with another now-famous lady back in high school ...

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... Scarlett Johansson! Back when they were both students at the Professional Children's School in NYC, Antonoff andJohanssonwere a serious item. They dated for two years and there is photographic evidence to prove it.

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Meanwhile, another former beau of ScarJo also shared a high school with a future colleague. In this case, we're talking Josh Hartnett, who was in class with ...

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... Rachael Leigh Cook, the '90s sweetheart best known for starring in "She's All That," with Freddie Prinze Jr. (Hollywood is clearly a very small world.) Cook and Hartnett both attended South High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and even went on to costar in the notoriously bad 2001 movie "Blow Dry," along with Alan Rickman and Natasha Richardson.

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When Will Smith's leading lady Jada Pinkett Smith was just a talented teenager, she attended the Baltimore School of the Arts in Maryland, along with her good friend ...

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Members of the Hollywood royalty tend to stick together, even while they're still kids. When Kate Hudson was at Crossroads High School in Santa Monica, she was also befriending ...

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... her future celebrity bestie, Liv Tyler. Both girls are entertainment legacies (Hudson is the daughter of Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, while Tyler is the progeny of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler) so maybe it's natural that they would gravitate towards one another. Tyler and Hudson were also classmates of Cash Warren and Baron Davis, so clearly Crossroads was a popular school choice for future stars.

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Santa Monica is definitely the place to be if you want to grow up famous. In addition to Crossroads, the ritzy L.A. suburb is also home to Santa Monica High School, which has hosted its fair share of celebrities, including Rob Lowe ...

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... Charlie Sheen ...

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... Sean Penn ...

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... and Robert Downey Jr. Whew. It turns out that practically every John Hughes movie has its roots in Santa Monica High, birthplace of the Brat Pack. These four were all at the school within a few years of one another, and were a tight-knit group of friends, according to Rob Lowe's memoir "Stories I Only Tell My Friends." Of the four, Lowe and Penn both graduated, Downey Jr. dropped out, and Sheen, unsurprisingly, was kicked out just weeks before graduation. Their crowd also included Sheen's brother Emilio Estevez and Holly Robinson from the original "21 Jump Street."